Matthew Barney
De lama lâmina, 2009The installation De lama lâmina [From Mud, a Blade, 2009] is the most recent development to arise from a performance held in collaboration with musician Arto Lindsay during the 2004 Carnival in Salvador, Bahia. That performance also resulted in the homonymous video presented at Inhotim's Marcenaria Gallery. In these works, Barney takes Bahian Candomblé as a reference to weave a narrative about the conflict between Ogum, the orixa (spirit or deity) of iron, war and technology, and Ossanha, the orixa of the forests, plants and forces of nature. Mythological narratives are often seen in works by Barney, who in this case resorted to Afro-Brazilian syncretism as a fertile field for exploring his interest in the dialectical nature of things. The coexistence of the outer and inner realms is essential in this artwork. Set apart from the park's central hub, a forest trail leads to a place where geodesic domes lend a futurist contrast to the landscape. The space inside is taken over by the machine, a human construction that is hoisting a sculpture representing a tree. Present in the performance and the video, the tractor is here deprived of all its functions and transformed into a large "still" sculpture at a moment of instability. The entire work is organized around this tension, evoking the dualism between destruction and creation, progress and preservation, fertility and death.
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